The Story of a Stuffed Elephant | Page 6

"Thank you, it is so near Christmas that I think I had better take the
Elephant with me," said Mr. Dunn. "I have my auto outside, and as it is
a closed car the Elephant will not take cold."

"I'm glad of that," said Miss Angelina. Very often she used to make
believe the toys were real, and alive, and could take cold, and become
ill. Of course she did not know that the toys really could move about
after dark, when no one saw them.
"Yes, I'll take the Elephant with me," went on Mr. Dunn. "I'll hide him
away in the attic until Christmas, and then let Santa Claus give him to
Archie. That boy of mine just loves animal toys!"
A little later the Stuffed Elephant was standing in among some other
packages in the back of the auto. On the front seat Mr. Dunn was
guiding the car through the storm, for it was now snowing hard.
"My! This reminds me of North Pole Land!" thought the Elephant, as
he looked out of the windows of the car and saw the white flakes
swirling about. "The ground is covered, too!"
It had been snowing some time before Mr. Dunn went to the toy store,
and now he was having hard work to make his machine plow through
the drifts on the way home.
"They took me away in such a hurry I had no time to say good-bye to
any of my toy friends," thought the Elephant, as he snuggled down in
the blanket in the rear of the auto. For elephants need to be kept warm,
you know--that is, real ones, and this Stuffed Elephant made believe he
was real.
"But of course I shouldn't have dared say anything while people were
around," thought the toy. "I hope I see some of them again, for it wasn't
very polite to come away as I did."
All at once, as the auto was rolling along quite fast, it came to a sudden
stop, with a bump and a jerk.
"Hello! We're stuck!" cried the man. "I must see if I can break through
the snowdrift."
He backed the car and started ahead again, with the motor going full

speed.
Bang! the car struck the snowdrift. There was a crash of glass.
"Oh, dear!" whispered the Elephant to himself, for he went toppling,
legs over head, out through a broken window of the car. Into a deep
snowdrift stuck the poor Stuffed Elephant.
[Illustration: The Stuffed Elephant Stuck in a Snowdrift.
The Story of a Stuffed Elephant. Page 27]
"Oh, this is terrible!" sighed the toy. "Oh, I am freezing to death!"
CHAPTER III
UP IN THE ATTIC
Banging puffing, and grinding noises sounded all about the Stuffed
Elephant. Around him swirled the white flakes of snow, but he could
hardly see them, for part of his head, part of his trunk, and one eye
were stuck in the drift.
Mr. Dunn's automobile had lurched to one side as Archie's father tried
to send it through a big, white drift. And the noise was made by the
motor, or engine, of the car, working its best to force the car ahead. The
glass window of the automobile had broken as it tipped to one side, a
piece of ice flying through.
And it was through the broken window that the Stuffed Elephant had
been tossed, right out into a snowdrift!
"Oh, but it's so cold! So cold!" said the Elephant, shivering.
Of course it was cold up at the North Pole where Santa Claus has his
workshop, and there was more snow and ice than near Archie's home.
But up there the Elephant had been inside the warm shop, just as he had
been kept in the warm toy store, and, until a few minutes ago, in the

warm auto.
"Well, I guess I'll have to back up and go around another way," said Mr.
Dunn, after a while. "I can't make my machine go through that
snowdrift. No use trying! I'll upset if I do! Hello, one of the windows is
broken, too! I'm sorry about that, but I can go on with a broken window,
which I couldn't do if I had a broken wheel. And I guess the toys won't
take cold. Yes, I must back up and go home by another road."
Starting the car slowly, Mr. Dunn backed it out of the drift. The front
wheels and the radiator, where the water is, were covered with masses
of white flakes, but aside from the broken window no damage had been
done.
"I'd better hurry home, too," said Mr. Dunn, talking to himself, a way
some jolly men have. "It's snowing worse, and I don't want to be kept
out here all night. I want to